Well, I was tearing apart a USB cable and an XBox dongle to make a USB XBox adapter to use dance mats/XBox controllers on my PC. Should've been moderately easy, since the USB and XBox wires ought be identically color-coded. For some reason, though, my USB cable's colors are out of wack and I don't know which is which. The USB, once the outside has been stripped, reveals red, white, brown, yellow and blue wires. There ought be red, white, black and green wires.

So, which wires are which?
I'm guessing that the blue is the other data wire (should be green), and brown is the grounding wire (should be black). I'm hazarding another guess, that the yellow wire serves the same purpose as the yellow wire in the XBox cable. Again, not entirely sure.

Unfortunately, I don't have any of the above at the moment. Luckily, the engineering lab has just about anything I could ever want, so I can test there and report back Monday. Until then, I've got guess-and-check or nothin'. :P

Yeah, that was a much clearer guide than most I've seen. There were some other complications with the old USB cable I used (the one with creepy colors, which I found out was made by Pelican, a cheap third-party game company. Explains why it was so stupidly designed), and it wound up dying. I'm sure I did the wiring right, but it didn't work anyway. Still, I've got another USB cable ready for use, and with the correct colors this time, so there should be no problems getting things working.

All right, one final update. After playing around with the wires a bit more and troubleshooting the X-Box controller drivers, I've managed to get an S-Controller and a Dancepad both working perfectly. Thanks for the links and tips, guys